Yeah all the stuff about character tools, soft and hard body dynamics, and faster ik are great and wonderful and make the upgrade worth it. But, has there been any talk of improvments to the render enigne.

P.S. would also love to see some video of charcter animation with the frame rate meter going curios to see if LW8 will play back full 30fps while your working in it

Joviex

07-31-2003, 07:51 AM

Originally posted by ddaniels

P.S. would also love to see some video of charcter animation with the frame rate meter going curios to see if LW8 will play back full 30fps while your working in it

I would love to know what type of system they are using on the stream demos. During the first of the cel shader demo's Jennifer can be heard saying, wow, fast machine.

I would like to know, since they are claiming realtime playback and interaction. Does that mean one of my 800mhz geforce2 512 meg ram beasts will get 30fps with a fully Ik rigged character twirling about with hypervoxel flames comming from the top of his head, as in the demos?

js33

07-31-2003, 08:16 AM

Originally posted by amorano
I would love to know what type of system they are using on the stream demos. During the first of the cel shader demo's Jennifer can be heard saying, wow, fast machine.

I would like to know, since they are claiming realtime playback and interaction. Does that mean one of my 800mhz geforce2 512 meg ram beasts will get 30fps with a fully Ik rigged character twirling about with hypervoxel flames comming from the top of his head, as in the demos?

I think they are using Dual Opterons from Boxx as they are a strategic partner of Newtek.:buttrock:

I think the playback will be determined by the complexity of the model. The model they showed moving around in realtime was a pretty simple model. :p
But the calculations for dynamics appeared to be happening in realtime. They were showing a model moving around and then saying that was the dynamic calculation rather than just a model moving around.

Cheers,
JS

Shade01

07-31-2003, 08:50 AM

I would like to know, since they are claiming realtime playback and interaction. Does that mean one of my 800mhz geforce2 512 meg ram beasts will get 30fps with a fully Ik rigged character twirling about with hypervoxel flames comming from the top of his head, as in the demos?

I've been asking this same question because all the cool OGL stuff means squat to me if the OGL performance is as slow as it is now.

yog

07-31-2003, 10:58 AM

Lee Stranahan initially said "there will be NO significant improvements" in LW8.0 concerning modelling and rendering.

However after the backlash on the Newtek forum and the subsequent anouncement that Lux are releasing a modelling program, he has modified it to say there are LIKELY to be improvements to these two areas in future point releases, once LW8.0 ships.

DaveW

07-31-2003, 08:06 PM

Originally posted by Shade01
I've been asking this same question because all the cool OGL stuff means squat to me if the OGL performance is as slow as it is now.

The problem right now isn't so much OpenGL speed as it is calculating the ik, expressions, and deformations. OpenGL can use some optimizing too of course, but for character animation it's really not the bottleneck.

Originally posted by yog

However after the backlash on the Newtek forum and the subsequent anouncement that Lux are releasing a modelling program, he has modified it to say there are LIKELY to be improvements to these two areas in future point releases, once LW8.0 ships.

He was saying that before siggraph even started, Modo had nothing to do with it. Modo might make NewTek add some more modeling features faster than they planned, or maybe it has no effect on their plans at all, only NewTek knows.

BTW Jessica Vitale sent a message to the LW mailing list about new LW8 features, the last one of the list was ultra-fast GI renders. That could mean she was just impressed by the speed of the dual opteron, but it might mean that the GI rendering has finally been optimized.

lwbob

07-31-2003, 08:34 PM

Originally posted by js33
I think they are using Dual Opterons from Boxx as they are a strategic partner of Newtek.:buttrock:

That is what Lee said he was demoing on.

But the calculations for dynamics appeared to be happening in realtime. They were showing a model moving around and then saying that was the dynamic calculation rather than just a model moving around.

Calculation as in already DONE once and now just playing back. Since most of the new dynaamices are Ino's stuff it is like a Motion Designer calculation. It doesn't simulate it in realtime. Just like when you watch and animation, there weren't rendered at 24/30 frames per second.

DaveW

07-31-2003, 09:29 PM

Originally posted by lwbob

Calculation as in already DONE once and now just playing back. Since most of the new dynaamices are Ino's stuff it is like a Motion Designer calculation. It doesn't simulate it in realtime. Just like when you watch and animation, there weren't rendered at 24/30 frames per second.

They said it was calculating in real-time, not Motion Designer time. Obviously on a slower machine it's not going to be realtime, but it's still going to be a lot faster than MD.

lwbob

07-31-2003, 09:43 PM

I think that may be marketing BS.

Just like when they claim MD is working real time mainly beacuse it is only simulating a few polys. I doubt a non-cartoon character would do that. They are demoing with all the usual super simple anime crap right?

DaveW

07-31-2003, 10:12 PM

Originally posted by lwbob
I think that may be marketing BS.

Just like when they claim MD is working real time mainly beacuse it is only simulating a few polys. I doubt a non-cartoon character would do that. They are demoing with all the usual super simple anime crap right?

The stuff I actually saw them setup and playback in realtime, no precalc going on, was a worm using softbodies, pants using softbodies, and a robot dog using hard bodies. They did press a calculate button, but on most of them it was realtime; on the pants I couldn't tell because the stream cut out, but when it came back on a few seconds later the calc was done. It was a lot faster than I've ever seen Motion Designer calculate. There was also a pig with a jellybelly, with a giant finger poking him in the belly. The precalc was probably 15fps, there's no way Motion Designer would have been able to calculate that fast. You can see some of this in the first video posted here: http://www.tv3d.com/Sig03/LW8.htm

edit: just to clarify, yes they had to pre-calculate the dynamics, but the calculations were usually realtime (or close to it). The pig was about half realtime and I couldn't see the pants but it was definately a lot faster than MD.

nutcracker

08-01-2003, 02:08 AM

The precalc was probably 15fps, there's no way Motion Designer would have been able to calculate that fast.

It probably just give lightwave 15 sec head start, and it'll keep calculate while the animation is playing.

The stuff I actually saw them setup and playback in realtime, no precalc going on,

if the calculation is fast enough, then it's realtime.

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